So I’ve made a reasonably large (broad but shallow is how I’d put it) parser game set in space. It’s called Superluminal Vagrant Twin, and you can play it here on itch.io.

(There’s a download link for the .gblorb story file on the left-hand side - I will be uploading the story file to the IF Archive eventually.)

Galactic-sized thanks to my fourteen beta testers, each of whom left an indelible mark on this game. None of them have seen this very latest version, and any remaining bugs or issues are entirely my own fault. Post here and let me know if you find any problems (spoiler tags would be nice).

So, I read this post and clicked through, thinking that I’d give the game a brief look.

Several hours later…

[spoiler]

score
You gained 11 out of 12 achievements and visited 46 worlds in 217 jumps.

talk to twin
“So, you got an Imago Republic visa, won the respect of the amalgs, saw the inside of Hardshell, met a molonk, entered the Orphanage, visited a world of cats, caught an alien sea creature, got a badass implant, commanded a crew of four, won an orbital race, caught a bounty… but we still need to catch all the bounties…”

You sigh. Really? Does that one last lousy thing really matter that much?

You’ve been discovering new destinations as the game has mentioned them. Can you infer the existence of any unmentioned destinations?

More explicit hints courtesy of Szymon:

“Some people say that humanity originated on Pearl, but I ain’t got time for that nonsense. Everyone knows we came from… uh… ya know, that planet. I forget the name…”

“Ya know, I wonder why they call it Source 3?”

“Terrible shame about ERX Beta being left alone like that, ain’t it? Maybe when it’s finished grieving it’ll be able to make another ERX…”

Comment on puzzle design (mild Curses and Hadean Lands spoilers):

Cf. inventing rituals in Hadean Lands and looking up Meldrews in the history book in Curses. This is a tried and true puzzle pattern where one is collecting pieces of information and must infer the existence of one that isn’t explicitly given based on the ones that are. I usually feel clever when I make that kind of leap, so I think it’s an effective pattern.

Well, it was short, but it was a lot of fun. I’m torn on whether or not I like the minimalist style; a big part of science fiction is the … vague mention of a massive universe just out of the corner of your eye, much bigger than the plot can cover; but even so, I think I would’ve liked more detail on some things - decompressionism, in particular, sounds hilarious.

Other than that, I can’t help but think of the lady and gentleman on that one Imago planet as the pair from Bioshock.

In general, well done. Now I’m going to go back figure out how to get into the Hardshell the expensive way.

The game suggests selling it to a merchant, so that’s what I did. When I saw that the merchant offered it back for sale, I suspected that the game was giving me an opportunity to retrieve it because it would be useful elsewhere. However, I never found any other use for it.

Decompressionism? That’s totally passé now; why would you waste time learning about that?

vlaviano:

ausgerechnet:

last lousy question… is themartian gemof any use?

The game suggests selling it to a merchant, so that’s what I did. When I saw that the merchant offered it back for sale, I suspected that the game was giving me an opportunity to retrieve it because it would be useful elsewhere. However, I never found any other use for it.

You can actually sell any item you want (except implants) to a merchant, and they’ll let you buy it back (at an increased price).

“Quest” items will only fetch a few creds, but there are a couple of objects in the game with a very high value that you can obtain for free (more or less) and which are worth selling to merchants. That item is one of them.